New York Times runs ‘quit Catholicism’ ad, refuses to run ‘quit Islam’ equivalent

The New York Times has explained its double standard for running paid advertisements attacking different religions with concern for the safety of America’s soldiers.

After running the atheist organization Freedom From Religion’s ad telling readers “It’s time to consider quitting the Catholic Church,” Pamela Geller of the organization Stop Islamization of America created a parody ad stating “It’s time to quit Islam.” The Daily Caller reports:

According to a Mar. 13 letter sent by the Times to… Geller, the $39,000 anti-Islam ad was rejected because “the fallout from running this ad now could put U.S. troops and/or civilians in the [Afghan] region in danger.”

This is the same New York Times which published details of the Wikileaks documents leaked by Bradley Manning in 2010. The Times justified its decision to publish the details of the documents, stating that it removed information which could lead to the targeting of individual operatives:

The Times and the other news organizations agreed at the outset that we would not disclose — either in our articles or any of our online supplementary material — anything that was likely to put lives at risk or jeopardize military or antiterrorist operations. We have, for example, withheld any names of operatives in the field and informants cited in the reports.

But by publishing stories from these documents such as alleged murders of civilians, including a pregnant woman, the Times engaged in the same kind of general incitement against American troops the paper now cites in its rejection of Geller’s ad.